Australians vow to drop Facebook for real-life contacts this February

Internet addiction expert Dr Philip Tam said Facebook-Free February was a symptom of more people becoming 'unhealthily obsessed' with social media, News.com.au reports.

Australians who are now sick and tired of wasting hours on social network and are worried about their privacy, have vowed to drop Facebook this month in favour of real-life social contact, phone calls and emails.

Many people who are bored to death by friends' mundane status updates have decided to go for a 'Facebook-Free February', and to spend more time with their closed ones.

Internet addiction expert Dr Philip Tam said Facebook-Free February was a symptom of more people becoming 'unhealthily obsessed' with social media, News.com.au reports.

He pointed that the 'whole set-up of social media invites compulsive behaviour, one gets so desperate to get feedback and once a person is trapped in this cycle it's often very hard to extricate'.

That's one reason why people are probably feeling the need to formalise this concept of a detox month, he added.

Dr Tam also warned that going cold turkey wasn't necessarily the best way to treat a Facebook addiction.

According to the report, he said that one has to 'analyse the underlying issues of why he/she needs to depend on it so much.

For which he recommend some self-relection first of all and possibly professional help if they think they've got an issue, the report said.